Table of Contents

Aging in the Eighties: America in Transition, 1981 (ICPSR 8691)

Principal Investigator(s):National Council on the Aging

Summary:

This survey was undertaken to record changes in views about
aging among older people as well as younger adults. In the seven years
after the benchmark study MYTH AND REALITY OF AGING, 1974 (ICPSR 7657)
was conducted, a number of significant social and demographic changes
occurred in American society, some profound economic trends continued,
suspicions grew about an impending financial crisis in the Social
Security system, and new priorities emerged at both the national and
local political levels. AGING IN THE EIGHTIES updates topics from... (more info)

This survey was undertaken to record changes in views about
aging among older people as well as younger adults. In the seven years
after the benchmark study MYTH AND REALITY OF AGING, 1974 (ICPSR 7657)
was conducted, a number of significant social and demographic changes
occurred in American society, some profound economic trends continued,
suspicions grew about an impending financial crisis in the Social
Security system, and new priorities emerged at both the national and
local political levels. AGING IN THE EIGHTIES updates topics from MYTH
AND REALITY OF AGING with items relating to the experience of aging,
social activities and the involvement of the elderly, expectations and
attitudes about retirement, and preparation for retirement. Other
major issues were explored for the first time, including the economics
of aging and retirement, the changing face of retirement and
employment after 65, Social Security and the role of government,
health status, and health care.

Access Notes

The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public.
Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

Dataset(s)

Study Description

Citation

National Council on the Aging. Aging in the Eighties: America in Transition, 1981. ICPSR08691-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1998. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08691.v2

Methodology

Sample:
This data collection employed a multistage random cluster
sampling procedure. The total number of 3,452 interviewed persons was
drawn from two national cross-sectional samples, an oversample of
persons aged 55 to 64 drawn from one of the two national samples, an
oversample of persons 65 years and over from two other national
samples, and oversamples of Hispanic and Black populations drawn from
special stratified multistage cluster national samples.

Data Source:

personal interviews

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:1988-01-06

Version History:

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.

1998-05-11 SAS data definition statements have been provided
for this collection. Also, the SPSS data definition statements were
replaced and the codebook and questionnaire were converted to PDF
files.